Ventricular fibrillation (VF) and atrial fibrillation (AF) can cause symptoms, morbidity (syncope or stroke), and mortality. Stable electrical rotors, recurring electrical focal sources, and other mechanisms are important drivers of sustained and/or clinically significant episodes of VF/AF. In order to treat VF/AF, therapeutic ablation, radiofrequency (RF), cryogenic, ultrasound, and/or external radiation sources can be used to target and/or eliminate these mechanisms. The ability to map the sustaining mechanisms for VF and/or AF using noninvasive methods would provide significant benefit in the management of such arrhythmias.
Current methods for reliably identifying the location of VF/AF-sustaining mechanisms (e.g., rotors or focal sources) are presently suboptimal. They often require an invasive procedure, the insertion of expensive 64-electrode basket catheters, and/or mapping arrhythmias using an expensive, difficult to obtain/manufacture, and cumbersome body surface vest, which may interfere with the placement of defibrillator pads. Therefore, such procedures are expensive, time consuming, and potentially hazardous to patients. Accordingly, methods for identifying the existence and/or location of fibrillation sources with less costly and/or less invasive procedures may provide significant clinical benefit.